Saving Sirius

Summary: One responsible adult remembers in time that he has not taken his potion... (Rated M for language and viciousness.)

Legal Disclaimer: anything you recognise in this story belongs to someone else, most likely to JK Rowling and/or her business partners. Any characters you don't recognise are mine. The specific plot in this fic may be mine; I say "may be" because fanfiction is vast, and one can never be sure there isn't a very similar one elsewhere. I'm not getting anything out of writing this except the pleasure of seeing how many ways JKR's Rube Goldberg machine could have been jammed in a sensible world.

Canon-accuracy disclaimer: it's been ages since I read the dead-tree version so even the stuff that is supposed to be canon is from memory. And I am an old man you know :)

Hermione shivered. They had just stunned a professor - who just happened to be the most vindictive man most people had ever seen or known. There would be hell to pay.

Harry saw her, and guessed what was happening. "Hey", he called. She shivered a bit more and scooted closer to him, accepting a sideways hug.

"You seem to have forgotten", said Harry with a wink at his newly found godfather, "you set fire to his robes in first year to save my life", he said with a grin.

Hermione's eyes grew round, and she looked desperately at the prone figure of Snape, as if worried that, despite the three stunners that had hit him, he would somehow hear her. After a few seconds of staring at Snape, the humour of the situation got to her and she decided to at least let out a shaky laugh.

"Anyway, what do we do now? We need to take Pettigrew to Dumbledore, and we need to wake up Sev-", started Remus, when he was cut off by Harry.

"NO, don't wake Snape. We can tell the headmaster where he is, and he can bring him in later. He will definitely complicate our situation. He does not really care that you are innocent - all he wants is to make my life miserable. And all I'm asking is a delay in waking him, that's all."

Remus sighed. "Harry, he is a pr-"

"NO, Professor Lupin" - it was Hermione's turn to cut him off. "Harry is right. While he did, supposedly, save Harry's life in first year, he appears willing to make Harry suffer anything short of that. We don't trust him at all. Please don't wake him."

Remus looked at Ron. As if reading his mind, Ron said, "Harry and Hermione are too nice. If I were alone here with him in this condition I'd kill him, transfigure his body into a bat, and bury him."

Hermione hissed in anger. "Ronald Bilius Weasley, you do NOT mean that.

"So what? He's a terrible teacher, no use to anyone except the snakes. Percy told me that he is most worried about his potions grade, and he did some research. Did you know that the number of healers in Mungos has dropped dramatically since Snape took over here?"

Sirius listened carefully, but did not do anything.

Meanwhile, Remus was taking a long, serious, look at Snape, as if he was considering what to do. Then he suddenly shook himself, and whisper-shouted, "Oh damn! I forgot to take the potion. I was wondering how he found us - he must have walked into my office with the potion, but by then I'd already left. And I had left the map open on my table!"

Sirius took a half-hearted swing at him. "Remus, you're getting old. You allowed Snivellous to touch our precious map, leave alone read it? Are you sure you're still a marauder?" So saying, he bent to Snape and quickly searched him for the map, just in case he still had it.

Finding it, he extracted it gingerly from the greasy man's pocket, and handed it to his godson.

"You know, we don't want him confiscating this map later", he said to Harry. Grabbing Snape's own wand, he cast a mild obliviate at Snape, erasing all his memories of the last few hours.

"I have a suggestion" said Ron, after Remus had fixed up his leg. "Don't laugh or make angry noises, but I think we should cut off Pettigrew's wand arm and both his legs. Even if we give him to the aurors, I can tell you - from listening to dad's rants - that they're mostly a sorry bunch of buffoons, with a few exceptions. Somehow or other, he will transform and escape, and we want to make sure he cannot do that."

Hermione looked a little green, and looked like she wanted to object.

"And Hermione, remember that this bastard had the run of the house. I know he has often been in Ginny's room, and I am sure at least some of those times she must have been changing. And while I can't prove it, I'm sure he has even been in the bathroom; you know there are enough places there for a rat to hide."

Hermione shut up. She may have wanted them to cut off something else too, but did not say anything.

"Remus, you're best at this. Please don't argue, and do it. He is thoroughly untrustworthy, not to mention a possible pedophile. Just do it."

Remus looked resigned. Truth to tell, so close to the full moon, the wolf was almost in charge, and he could not bring himself to really object.

Quickly and efficiently he chopped off three of Pettigrew's limbs - the legs about half-way up the thighs, the right arm at the shoulder. Leaving only the hand on which the dark mark was visible, he then woke him up.

Pettigrew woke up screaming, an promptly passed out again.

"Well, that's that", said Remus. "I stay behind here and lock the door, just like I used to before the wolfsbane was invented. You all take Pettigrew to Dumbledore."

"While I would love to leave Snape with you in the room, I don't think that would be taken very kindly by anyone."

"Leave him just outside the door; we know that door holds up OK".

Sirius nodded. Levitating Snape, he placed him, not too carefully, just outside the door. Then he gave Harry his wand back, and motioned for him to levitate Pettigrew out.

He left after the kids, closing the door behind him. Remus, inside, drew the twin, heavy-duty, bolts - bolts which in his wolf form he could not physically reach, and even if he did, could not open (thank God wolves did not have opposable thumbs!) Sirius tested the door, then turned around to follow the kids.

After they had turned a corner, he suddenly appeared to realise he still had Snape's wand on him. "Oops, I'd better leave this near him; I'll be back in a minute". He swiftly turned around and ran to the door.

Epilogue

Sirius was declared innocent. The courts did not, at first, take kindly to the vigilante justice that appeared to have been meted out to Pettigrew, but Ron Weasley - from the witness seats - raised his hand to ask permission to speak. On a nod from the judge, he said, "ask him how many times he has spied on my sister - who by the way is not even a teenager yet - when she was changing or in the bath."

The judges quickly decided losing three limbs was not that bad.

Snape never returned from the tunnel. When Remus walked out of the shack, Snape was not there. He assumed Snape had woken up and gone back to his room. But apparently he had not come back, and was in fact nowhere in the castle.

"I bet he realised that his real nature would be revealed when Pettigrew was questioned under truth serum, so he skedaddled. Probably left the country, the coward", said Sirius.

In all the questioning by Dumbledore and the aurors, it never came out - it had completely slipped the children's minds for sure - that Sirius had gone back briefly to return his wand, and that he had taken a bit longer than one might expect for such a simple task.

The End

AN: Snape was collateral damage. His unknown, hopefully not-very-gory (but thoroughly well-deserved if it were, nevertheless) fate was not part of the plot bunny. Think of it as a bonus, and a protest against the inordinately large number of morons on this site who appear to think Snape is a good guy.